A government plan to keep blasphemous material away from Pakistani internet users didn't work out quite as planned.

The government of Pakistan imposed a nation-wide ban on YouTube in September of last year in response to the presence of "blasphemous" material on the site, in particular a trailer for Innocence of Muslims, a rabidly anti-Islamic video that caused a violent, worldwide uproar when it floated to the surface last summer. The Pakistani Prime Minister ordered the Ministry of Information to block the service in order to prevent viewing of the video after YouTube declined a White House call to remove it.

But not everyone was happy with the ban. The English-language Express Tribune called it "a naked power play" and said, "We need to make it clear that we do not wish to regress to a dark age when a centralized authority controlled all access to information." A growing number of complaints prompted Interior Minister Rehman Malik to announce on Friday that the ban would be lifted, and that internet users in Pakistan would be protected from blasphemous and pornographic content by government-installed firewalls.

Unfortunately, shortly after the ban was lifted, the "immensely influential" television news network Geo reported that anti-Islamic material was still accessible. An outcry led by Ansar Abbasi, "a right-leaning journalist" who, according to his Pakistani Leaders Online profile believes that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is "the only Muslim Leader who takes real pride in being a follower of the greatest religion," caused Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf to reimpose the ban just a few hours after the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority ordered local ISPs to make it available. According to the New York Times, YouTube was accessible to the people of Pakistan for three minutes.

Malik hasn't yet commented on the turnaround but two Geo reporters criticized the move on Twitter: One said the Interior Minister and Prime Minister were like two kids playing with a light switch while another posited that the government wanted to maintain the ban and used the report as an excuse to do so.

Ugh. Our government had a huge bitch fit as well and blocked YouTube, and Google had to change their TOS right at the same time so that all those YouTube video downloading sites like ClipConverter and SaveVid had to shut down their operations. And my 'net connection is too slow for streaming through proxies. Finally found one site that still lets you convert and DL YT videos.

An outcry led by Ansar Abbasi, "a right-leaning journalist" who, according to his Pakistani Leaders Online profile believes that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is "the only Muslim Leader who takes real pride in being a follower of the greatest religion,"

This really went off on a tangent here. Why was it necessary to add the journalists opinion about Ahmedinejad?

Unless you were going to include a specific Iranian policy he agreed with. Just seems like an opportunity to remind us about Iran. Or supports Iran = evil...because apparently his influential status and being right wing and forcing the government to close down youtube wasn't 'evil enough'

New yorks time just wrote;

The criticism was led by Ansar Abbasi, a right-leaning journalist who often speaks out on morality and religion.

That sounds informative and not like a daily mail half-news half-opinion piece

"Do not say, that if the people do good to us, we will do good to them; and if the people oppress us, we will oppress them; but determine that if people do you good, you will do good to them; and if they oppress you, you will not oppress them"

Just some quotes attributed to Muhammed. You know, that one prophet guy that spread the word of Islam to the origional muslims.

tmande2nd:Once again we see that certain nations fear free information.

One of my friends from University is Muslim and he just laughed at the "blasphemous" material on Youtube.Get some thicker skin already.

I mean really you DONT have the right to not be offended.You just have the right not to listen to offensive stuff.Change the channel, tune the radio, close the web page WALK AWAY.

Now I'm not trying to say they are right in their situation in any way but would you really like it if I tailed you to every single place you visited while shouting out bad things about you to every place you ever walk to?.

Sure there's growing thick skin but that's also another way to easily go out of your way to piss people off and in turn just repeat "grow skin to my level" to get away with saying bad shit.

Some people just don't like bad shit right in their face and hell I sure as didn't love my photograph being posted all around the college walls and demanded they be pulled off and the culprit found because I chose not to walk away from that kinds of shit because you don't let people fuck you over like that.

By all means walk away for them and for anyone else but don't for a second forget the same advice if for a moment you can't walk away from almost anything ever since that's pretty much the ultimatum it brings about.

lechat:muslims need to grow up seriously. second only to scientologists noone cries more than you guys when someone insults their beliefs

if you don't like someone's opion (sp? or is it?) politely tell them to go fuck themselves or in the case of the internet don't watch the fucking thing

And how would you react if a large portion of the world hated and put down your race/culture and religion? Granted their not 100% innocent, but to be fair alot of the issue has been cause by a few that's caused hatred of a vast majority of people. Your above comment is a great example of how westerners looks down on them based on the fact their a Muslim.

Us in the west need to accept that there are those that are different to us, and that they have different views and values. The 'censorship' may be forced appon them, or it may be wanted by the population as their sick of the west condemning them and running into it all the time. We really only have our local biased news sources to tell us what's happening.

lechat:muslims need to grow up seriously. second only to scientologists noone cries more than you guys when someone insults their beliefs

if you don't like someone's opion (sp? or is it?) politely tell them to go fuck themselves or in the case of the internet don't watch the fucking thing

And how would you react if a large portion of the world hated and put down your race/culture and religion? Granted their not 100% innocent, but to be fair alot of the issue has been cause by a few that's caused hatred of a vast majority of people. Your above comment is a great example of how westerners looks down on them based on the fact their a Muslim.

Us in the west need to accept that there are those that are different to us, and that they have different views and values. The 'censorship' may be forced appon them, or it may be wanted by the population as their sick of the west condemning them and running into it all the time. We really only have our local biased news sources to tell us what's happening.

you seem to be of the opinion i dislike muslims and am discriminating against them in some way when in fact i am doing exactly the opposite. i'll state again "grow up muslims" the next time a christian comes in and starts crying that someone insulted their religion i'll tell them the same thing and the next time a scientologist starts a legal battle cause someone said their religion was stupid i'll do the same for them

if a muslim wants to block themselves off from the outside world for fear of hearing something they don't agree with they should feel free to do so but i don't think it's fair to impose the same restrictions on a whole countrywhat kind of ass backwards world would we live in if we couldn't openly criticize that which we don't agree with and ppl are refused access to alternate opinions for fear it might hurt their feelings or change their minds

lechat:muslims need to grow up seriously. second only to scientologists noone cries more than you guys when someone insults their beliefs

if you don't like someone's opion (sp? or is it?) politely tell them to go fuck themselves or in the case of the internet don't watch the fucking thing

And how would you react if a large portion of the world hated and put down your race/culture and religion? Granted their not 100% innocent, but to be fair alot of the issue has been cause by a few that's caused hatred of a vast majority of people. Your above comment is a great example of how westerners looks down on them based on the fact their a Muslim.

Us in the west need to accept that there are those that are different to us, and that they have different views and values. The 'censorship' may be forced appon them, or it may be wanted by the population as their sick of the west condemning them and running into it all the time. We really only have our local biased news sources to tell us what's happening.

you seem to be of the opinion i dislike muslims and am discriminating against them in some way when in fact i am doing exactly the opposite. i'll state again "grow up muslims" the next time a christian comes in and starts crying that someone insulted their religion i'll tell them the same thing and the next time a scientologist starts a legal battle cause someone said their religion was stupid i'll do the same for them

if a muslim wants to block themselves off from the outside world for fear of hearing something they don't agree with they should feel free to do so but i don't think it's fair to impose the same restrictions on a whole countrywhat kind of ass backwards world would we live in if we couldn't openly criticize that which we don't agree with and ppl are refused access to alternate opinions for fear it might hurt their feelings or change their minds

In that case my apologises, text didnt bring that across very well.I agree with your last point too.

why is it still legal (weird term since where dealing with a whole country here but I mean International law) for a government to make decisions to ban something for everyone because it has offended ONE religion (any religion), no country should be ruled by one religion but it seems every country loves to still have an "official Religion" and even the countries that don't still have majority religions,I guess that is an unavoidable situation.(A truly perfect world would be one where people taking offence to people having different opinions(No matter how stupid/hateful) about their religion don't exist) (by the way if anyone has taken offence to this post it wasn't meant to offend and was probably just badly worded on my part)

Pat8u:why is it still legal (weird term since where dealing with a whole country here but I mean International law) for a government to make decisions to ban something for everyone because it has offended ONE religion (any religion), no country should be ruled by one religion but it seems every country loves to still have an "official Religion" and even the countries that don't still have majority religions,I guess that is an unavoidable situation.(A truly perfect world would be one where people taking offence to people having different opinions(No matter how stupid/hateful) about their religion don't exist) (by the way if anyone has taken offence to this post it wasn't meant to offend and was probably just badly worded on my part)

Under your ruling then the west cant make laws regarding what their citizens can watch at all (thus ratings boards would no longer be legal). Different cultures (and thus countries) have different standards and rules. Some places like the US are fairly open with violence, while others are more restrictive. Some places allow porn (for example), while others don't. Neither is right or wrong, what's wrong is for one country to try and impose their laws/views on another.And yes laws in most western countries (especially the USA) are often influenced by religions, its not always good but some of it isn't bad either.

If you can't control and bend others to you will, put a sack over your head and cover your ears and yell "I cant hear you LALALALALALALALALALALALAL!!!" really loud. Because that is how civilized adults act.

And they want to be part of the modern world as equals... Well it is hard to treat someone equally when they keep going below the standards... (Everything above is aimed at the government...)

I fell sorry for people of Pakistan... At least for those who don't support these actions of the government. Those who do can just fall off the edge of the world... If it wouldn't be round. I wonder if Pakistan's government acknowledges even that?